WE DO not know how many students choose not to request speakers out of risk-aversion. But that doesn’t mean that there are not problems that need to be taken seriously. This suggests that talk of a crisis of freedom of speech on campus is exaggerated.
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Moreover, according to a 2019 representative survey of more than 2000 students, by the Policy Institute at King’s College London (KCL), the overwhelming majority think it is important for universities to protect free speech, and 70 per cent feel comfortable expressing their views on campus. High-profile cases of students denying platforms to those whom they dislike (such as the last-minute cancellation of the former Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s invitation to speak at the University of Oxford in 2020) are clearly problematic, but don’t reflect the huge number of events that go ahead unimpeded. And a survey of 61 students’ unions in 2019-20 found that just six events out of nearly 10,000 were cancelled. That year, out of 62,094 requests for external speakers, only 53 were rejected. Radicalisation on campus is very rare: only 15 referrals were made by English universities to Prevent, the deradicalisation programme, in 2017-18. In a 2019 YouGov poll conducted for the Theos think tank, 52 per cent of adults thought that free speech was under threat in universities (only 14 per cent disagreed) 29 per cent thought that “Islamic extremism” was common there.Īs I explain in my recent book on this topic with Alison Scott-Baumann, Freedom of Speech in Universities: Islam, charities and counter-terrorism, there is a binary narrative about universities: both that free speech is in crisis because they are unfairly restricting it (and that students are snowflakes unwilling to grapple with ideas they disagree with) and that they are giving too much freedom to extremists (particularly Muslim ones). The Government knows that the public is worried about universities, and there are votes to be won by taking action. Legislating on this is a quagmire, as the Universities Minister, Michelle Donelan, discovered when it was suggested that the new law could force universities to host Holocaust-deniers. But commentators have raised important questions about how the plans would work in practice, and about unintended consequences. These plans will encourage students who currently feel unable to invite external speakers that they want in case they are perceived to be too controversial. Others are more far-reaching, including the proposal to fine institutions if they are deemed to uphold free speech insufficiently, and the proposal to extend free-speech requirements directly to student unions - which would make it much harder for student unions to deny platforms to people with lawful views that the students don’t like. Some proposals within the Bill largely replicate existing legal requirements on universities to uphold free speech within the law. Over the past year, the Government has ratcheted up interventions in the sector, culminating in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, introduced in May. WHEN everything else seems turned upside down, one thing at least hasn’t changed: in universities, freedom of speech remains as divisive as ever.
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